by Helen Blackmore

Created on: April 30, 2008

A QUIET RAGE

I've always thought it would be nice to be deaf. Does that surprise you? It seems I always had such difficulty hearing. Not that there was anything wrong with my ears, but the unrelenting thoughts and voices that ran through my mind at breakneck speed were so loud they drowned out everything else.

Through this fog, I do have some remarkably clear memories. At age three, at a neighbors house, I wondered what would happen if I hit the dog on the nose with a toy hammer. To this day I could not tell you why I did it. There was a screaming in my head, and then I was screaming aloud. Predictably enough, I was bitten, and still carry the scar on my face.

All that remains of that event was the memory of blood, and my confusion.

My reactions to most situations were a bit skewed. When someone yelled loudly, as on the playground, my body would betray me by freezing up. Try as I might, it would take some time to settle down enough to become mobile. "Look at them staring at you!" , I would hear, as my classmates cast curious but innocent glances my way.

There is a picture of my younger sister, just an infant in my Dad's arms, and I, sitting on the porch together. Well, in theory I know it is me, but the look of hatred I wore seems foreign, like it must be someone else. As my mother took the snapshot, I pinched my sister's foot...hard...after all, she took my parents away from me. The madness can be seen even at that early age, and is still quite unsettling whenever I see that photo, and feel that anger.

I had no idea this was not normal; this was simply life, my life. I never just enjoyed a sunset; it made me weep huge crocodile tears. A petty quarrel would become a dark terrible war.. "They will PAY for that". When I was happy, I was delirious. My times of sadness were so intense I wanted to die. All of this was hidden behind an impenetrable mask I felt compelled to maintain at all costs. And the voices, always..the voices...

You may wonder how such a soft spoken person as myself can claim to be so full of contradictions as these, or capable of what I did. I can't believe it myself sometimes, but here I am, incarcerated in this tomb of an institution, while you, dear reader, are safe at home. I will try to explain the events leading up to this fall as best I can recollect.

Richard and I married quite young, mostly to escape the strict rules our parents insisted we follow. I realize now that it was my persuasiveness that finally wore him down, but I have always been

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